North Korean defector says Japan aided nuclear program - N. Korea already has nuclear warheads for its missiles!

Geostrategy

Week of March 18, 2003

A defector who worked at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility says Japanese companies supplied key elements of Pyongyang's nuclear program.

Kim Taeho, 43, told Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper last month that "heavy machinery and equipment that came from Japan via a third country were used everywhere at the nuclear development site."

Kim worked at North Korea's April Enterprise, a uranium refinery at the Yongbyon nuclear complex. He also served for 10 years as a deputy plant manager at Namchon Chemical Complex, a uranium production plant in Pyongsan, beginning in 1985.

"In refining uranium, nothing other than high acid resistant stainless steel liquid waste tanks and pipes that are made in Japan could be used," Kim said. "Heavy machinery and equipment -- from drainage pumps, hydraulic boring machines, to trucks for transportation -- that were used to build the huge nuclear complex in Yongbyon were all made in Japan."

The Japanese machines and parts played a crucial role in the nuclear development at Yongbyon, he stated.

The equipment was purchased covertly by North Korea through front companies in Southeast Asia, he said.

Kim made the disclosures in a book titled. "The Truth About the North Korean Nuclear Plants That I Saw."

Kim, who worked near a missile base, also disclosed that North Korea's nuclear armed missiles are targeted at Tokyo. Kim also said that North Korea already possess nuclear warheads for its missiles.